My salary target is wrong, and low, yet again

My new salary target was set at $82,180 by the Dean’s office, but I think that’s wrong. Here are my calculations:

  • Jane reported the base salary for full at $63,988 in her e-mail.
  • I get the $5,000 for terminal degree, so that’s $68,988.
  • I have worked at Guilford 22 years. They didn’t count my earlier experience when they calculated it back in 2016, which was ok with me. The full professor rate for experience is now $700/year, and 22 x $700 is $15,400. Add that to the previous and I’m at $84,388.
  • The disciplinary bonus for Geology was set at $1,400. It’s possible that they have started to taper these values to zero as we approach our targets as the original plan stated. However, we did not do this in the 2018 raises, and Frank seemed steadfastly against doing that whenever we discussed it. If I’m still supposed to get the full disciplinary bonus, that’s $1,400 more, or $85,788.

I’ve written to Frank about this apparent error, which amounts to $3,608 lower target salary than I should have had. It’s possible there’s some hidden explanation I don’t understand, but as far as I know, nothing changed this year other than the base and the annual service adjustment.

Based on the numbers they gave me, it looks like the raises they applied this year amount to 11.4% of the gap between previous salary and target salary, which means the actual raise they gave is potentially about $400 lower than it should be, or 34% lower than it should be. That amount and percentage would change if they’ve done the same thing for all faculty because of the constraint of the pool size.

Of course, this doesn’t even get into the college setting the faculty salary targets way too low in previous years, which the college has yet to address or even comment on.

If you’d like to check your target, I’ve updated the salary calculator here:

2019 Salary Target Calculator

2 Comments

  1. Julie A Winterich

    Dave, Thanks for sharing this information and for the handy calculator that you designed–so helpful! My target is $4,000-$5000 less than where it should be based on the calculator. I would appareciate a detailed explanation of how our targets were determined and how they differ from your calculator. Was there a math mistake? Or did something change in the formula and we haven’t yet been informed? Thanks again for this post, and for your leadership communicating with colleagues about faculty salaries! (Your graphs rock!)

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